


If death is not the end, I'd like to know what is

by Arwyn



Category: due South
Genre: (eventually) - Freeform, Animal Death, Established Relationship, Grief/Mourning, Investigations, Jewish Character, Kid Fic, M/M, Post-Call of the Wild, Psychological Drama, Sad with a Happy Ending, no really i swear it's a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-19 01:33:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5951157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arwyn/pseuds/Arwyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>* Benton Fraser has a dog. (Or wolf. Or wolf-dog.)<br/>* Benton Fraser’s dog is Diefenbaker. He’s deaf (sometimes), and freakishly smart, and maybe-probably-doesn’t-but-maybe talks back.<br/>* That’s Fraser. That’s who Fraser <em>is</em>. He’s the guy with the wolf (dog).</p><p>And that hasn't changed since 1981.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If death is not the end, I'd like to know what is

**Author's Note:**

> Title borrowed from a poem by Robyn Hitchcock.
> 
> My beta says I have to mark this as a Major Character Death story. I say it's a story about the triumph of life, as weird and complicated as life is. I maintain the ending is, well, as happy as life gets.

Fraser and Dief had been due back three days ago. Ray had called the RCMP office -- he wasn’t worried or anything, he wasn’t checking up on Fraser, he just had a question that the Constables could answer, and they gave him an update on Fraser’s status at the same time, that’s all -- and they’d said he’d finished, booked the bad guy in at Yellowknife, he’d be home tomorrow. Except tomorrow became yesterday which became the day before yesterday. And Fraser still wasn’t back. 

Ray wasn’t freaking out; it wasn’t like he was sitting at home with nothing to do. He went to work, and maybe someone tried to ask about Fraser but Ray couldn’t hear them over the impact wrench. He stopped at Bonnie’s market on the way back out of town, and maybe Bonnie tried to smile extra kindly at him but Ray was busy going loony trying to sort the fucking Loonies from the real quarters he still hadn’t gotten rid of.

Ray’s just finishing up the cord of wood Fraser had laid in for the fall -- proper preparation, blah blah -- when he heard the dogs in the barn start up, and maybe… yeah, there was Fraser’s baritone telling them to hush.

He stored the ax -- thwacking it in the stump did so count as putting away -- and went around the cabin. Fraser was there, flannel wrapped and looking unhurt for once, waving at Ray and then solid under Ray’s arms, saying he was fine, there weren’t any complications, everything was fine. Ray maybe would’ve beat more out of him, but there was a wet nose sniffing his hip, and he looked down to a fuzzy face he’d never seen before.

“Who’s that?” Two words, and the world cracked, because Fraser looked at him like _he’d_ lost his marbles, and said “Don’t be silly, Ray.” And then turned to this new dog -- this dog looking at him like he was some neat new thing -- and said, “Come, Dief.”

Which.

What. the. fuck.

So then it was Ray running after Fraser and trying to remember what happened to pupils a day or two after a concussion, trying to figure out if Fraser’s head was bumpier than usual, and then Fraser was tackling _him_ , like _he_ maybe hadn’t survived _staying at home_ , and maybe Ray would’ve started questioning if he had finally cracked like the ice but the new dog was still wandering around checking out everything because _it’d never seen it before_ because _it wasn’t Dief_.

They called a truce -- after Fraser proved the impostor answered just fine to Dief’s name, after Ray yelled that he damn well _will_ kill Fraser if this is payback for the Vecchio thing -- and it was weird, how absolutely not weird it was. Other than the dog delusion and not admitting to the missing days, Fraser was _fine_. He was sarcastic and snarking at Ray over the stuff Ray didn’t do (hey, he was gonna get to the dishes tonight, he was) and raising his brow at how much wood Ray’d chopped, and cleaning up completely after dinner, and dragging Ray to bed with heat in his eyes -- and if the strange dog was watching them with curiosity ‘cause _Dief_ had seen them head to bed with intent a thousand times but this one hadn’t because _he wasn’t Dief_ , well, Ray was a bit distracted at the time.

*****

The next day Ray entered investigation mode.

*****

He had to be subtle, of course, but it’s not like he lost all the tricks and things when he quit the CPD. They could take his badge and his sidearm, but they couldn’t take away knowing how to pull a story from someone without the perp knowing he was doing it. And a guy like Fraser, who was half stories all the time anyway? Piece of pie.

So over the next couple weeks, he got The Story of Dief. And Fraser, normally all over tracking the, whatchamacallit, discrepancies, didn’t notice there were holes bigger than the one floating up in the stratosphere in what he said. Things didn’t add up.

As in, didn’t add up. The _numbers_ were wrong. Fraser could say arctic wolves rarely lived longer than twelve years in the morning, and that afternoon tell Ray how he met Dief on one of his first solo patrols back in ‘81, and he wouldn’t even _hesitate_. Ray would rather avoid another head exam, what with the way Fraser woke him up every hour that night he thought Ray’d gotten knocked around, so he didn’t outright confront the guy or anything. Got a lot of practice nodding and smiling -- and changing the subject damn quick when he couldn’t handle the wigging out any more hearing about the wolf that probably wasn’t even the Dief he knew, while this new fake Dief lay there, tongue lolling -- but if Fraser noticed, he wasn’t letting on.

Ray figured he had to go back farther, get an outside look. Vecchio would -- no. Farther back, yeah. Even Vecchio didn’t come on the scene for longer than a wolf born in ‘81 shoulda lasted. Someone who knew Fraser back then, then.

He called Quinn.

*****

Ray slammed the phone down, waking up the mutt in front of the fire. Of all the stupid, mystic… “‘ _That’s a question for your partner, Ray. The dog answers to Dief, doesn’t he, Ray? How do you tell the difference between an arctic wolf and a polish cop with experimental hair, Ray?_ ’” Ray slammed the pots around on the stove, trying to prep dinner (he’d give this to the newbie: guy could still clean up the cooking scraps and messes Ray made just as well as… he used to) and not fly out to Taloyoak which Quinn was using for his base this summer, even if kicking the old guy in the head sounded like greatness just now. Ray’s answer to the last “question” from Quinn (“Eat my shit!”) had gotten nothing but amused laughter, which still echoed in Ray’s ears.

Fine. That was fucking fine. Quinn wasn’t the last of his lines, not by a long shot. He was just getting warmed up -- shake, psychological badness, shake.

*****

Going back to the beginning didn’t help, so Ray tried the other end. Fraser was last seen in Yellowknife, and no one said nothing about having a strange dog then. (Actually, no one said nothing about having _any_ dog then, and, in Ray’s experience, people usually commented on the wolf. He filed that away to follow up later.) He showed up in Inuvik with this imposter three days later. Where could he’ve picked up a dog -- and not just any dog, but a white and beige husky-looking mix, who was freakishly smart (and frequently annoying) and happy to follow Fraser around and act like no police dog ever did outside the movies?

He hit the jackpot on the fourth place he called (two shelters, one breeder, one trapper who ran an unofficial sled dog trading post). He leaned his head back on the couch, one hand falling to scratch behind definitely-not-deaf ears.

“Oh for sure, yeah, we placed out a light colored husky mix ‘bout a month ago. Guy came in, wearing one o’them Mountie type hats, asked to see the dogs. Most people come in, they’re looking for something specific, right? Family dog, or working dog, maybe they heard about a breed and wanna see if we got one, or one they can lie to themselves is like that, eh? This guy, he says next to nothing to us ‘bout what he’s looking for, just asks to see the dogs. Doesn’t even call them dogs, says something like ‘Companion canines’, like they’re high fallutin’ trained up animals or something. Mounties, eh? 

“Anyway, he goes inside, and just _looks_ at ‘em. Strangest thing, dogs don’t normally like that, right? Surest way to get a strange dog to attack, just stare at ‘em. But the dogs don’t do nothing like normal to this guy. Biggest, baddest dogs we got -- some people want ‘em viscious for show, don’t do nothing better for guarding, but you know what people can be like, eh? -- those beasts just _cower_ from him. Some of the lapdogs, things dumb tourists brought up and now we gotta keep ‘em warm year ‘round or the poor things’d freeze their balls off, if they still had ‘em, they go wild, trying to get to him. He lets ‘em sniff, but we can tell it’s no puny plaything he’s come for.

“Anyway, three times he stops, really stops, in front of one. Spends an eternity just watching, and I don’t go for none of that mystic stuff myself, but watching him watch them, you could swear there was something else going on. Twice, he says something -- we couldn’t tell what, not from up front, but I’m pretty sure it weren’t no Queen’s English -- and he sorta slumps, see, before he goes on again. Third time, he starts smilin’, not nothing you could call a real smile, but like he means it, starts _talking_ to the dog, like the thing understands, and it’s the damnedest thing but I’d swear it looked like the mutt _did_ , and then he opened the gate, like he owned the place, and the damn thing trotted out after him, like the man owned _him_.

“And that was it, got the placement papers here, all right and proper. A _B. Fraser_ , looks like. You want the info?

“‘Nother dog? Nah, he didn’t come in with no other dog. Nothing a’tall outta place with him. Well, had a spot of something on his cheek when he came in, Sally got him to wash it off first -- the dogs can go a bit bark wild if they smell food or game or whatnot on a body, we’ve had to send some trappers home to change afore we let ‘em lookieloo, but he weren’t nothing like that bad. Sure, mighta been blood; guy looked like he knew how to use that knife he kept on his belt.

“Anything else we can help you with? Got a litter of gorgeous Akitas in. Nah? Suit yourself, then.”

Ray blew out his breath. That was… he didn’t know _what_ that was, but he sure didn’t like it. Di--the dog put his head on Ray’s lap and whined a little, big eyes looking up at him. Ray grabbed his ruff -- gentle-like -- and shook it a little. “Yeah. You and me both, buddy.”

*****

Frannie wasn’t any more help. Didn’t matter she was pregnant, again, with a kid that _definitely_ wasn’t Fraser’s, that she knew about Ray living in sin up in the Great White Nowhere, that she had _Welsh_ visiting her at _home_ (Ray suppressed that thought as quickly as possible), she still couldn’t see or say anything wrong with Mr Perfect. He managed to get Welsh on the phone ( _notthinkingaboutit, notthinkingaboutit_ ), who said he mighta noticed a different sort of look about the dog trailing after the Mountie, but he had other, dirtier animals to deal with, with fewer manners (“Thanks, sir.”), so he couldn’t say for sure. And then -- because Welsh hadn’t done enough to scar Ray for life yet, chatting on the phone with Frannie chattering away behind him -- he told Ray to try Vecchio.

Damn damn and double damn.

But if it helped...

He called his mum to get Stella’s number.

*****

“Hello?”

_ Stella _ . Ray’d been with Fraser for years now, divorced for years before that, but still: Stella. He wasn’t sure his palms would ever stop sweating when he heard that voice.

Of course, it helped that she always sounded more and more annoyed with him these days.

“ _Hello?_ ”

“Yeah, hey, hi Stell. Is -- heh, uh, this is weird, but --”

“Ray…”

“Is Vecchio there? I gotta talk to him. With him. About, uh. Y’know.”

“Corporal Fraser?”

“Yeah, from before. He there?”

“...Just a moment.”

Ray let his head drop, slouched farther back on the couch, rubbed his left hand on his jeans. Of all the awkward--

“Yeah?”

Time was, Ray was convinced Vecchio had a problem with the queer thing, or maybe even the Jewish thing. Big Italian family, Catholic, worked hard to be the macho man of the house, plus, cop: it stood to reason, right? Turns out, not so much; Vecchio’d known about Fraser well before he left town the first time. Turns out, Vecchio just didn’t get why Fraser liked _him_.

Strangely, it’d made things kinda easier, as far as Ray was concerned. But things still weren’t anything like what he’d call friendly between ‘em.

“Yeah, hi.”

“Is something going on with Fraser? Stella said --”

“No! Nah, nope -- or, uh, maybe? I dunno. S’why I wanted to -- God, this is gonna sound so --”

“Spit it out, Stanley.”

Mostly Ray loved being a whole country and most of a continent away from Fraser’s best friend, but right then he’d have given anything to be in the same room so he could _punch Vecchio in the face_.

“Dief’s dead.”

Or he could do the next best thing. He let himself smirk a bit while Vecchio spluttered on the other end of the line.

“What -- when -- but Fraser --”

“Happened two months back.”

“What the hell, Kowalski?! Lemme talk to Fraser!”

“No can do, he’s not here. Out on patrol. Took the mutt with him.”

“God, Stanley, is he okay, how’s he -- wait, what? What did you just say?”

“Yeah, so anyway, sorry I bugged you, catch you later, ‘kay?”

And he hung up.

Kept his hand on the phone.

He didn’t flinch when it rang, but let it go a couple times anyway. Just ‘cause.

“Yeah?”

He held the phone away from his ear, rubbed his eye with the handset until the yelling resolved into his name, curse words, and an increasing volume of “hello??"

He put the phone back.

“You done?”

“You better explain what the _hell_ you mean, _Stanley_ , before I fly up there and get it out of you directly.”

“Oooo, scary, Vecchio.”

“ _ Ti metto un remo in culo e ti sventolo--! _ ”

“I dunno, maybe you _should_ come up here. It’s… he’s… Look, when you were in Chicago, when you knew Dief, did he ever… change?”

“What, like a _werewolf_?”

“Like a were -- Jesus, Vecchio, no, not like a werewolf. Like… like he was, uh.” Ray covered his face with his free hand. “Like a different dog. Like a… new Dief. Or. Or anything like that.”

There was a long pause.

“What are you saying here, Kowalski?”

“I’m just --” Ray blew out his breath, shook out his head a bit. He didn’t open his eyes. “I’m just asking, when you knew him, did you ever see Dief -- the dog, wolf, whatever, that Fraser called Dief -- did you see him… change?”

“I… Shit. Maybe, I don’t know.”

“How do you not know? Something like that, how the hell do you not know?”

“It was right when I met him, okay? I barely knew the guy, knew the dog he dragged along even less, so when he came back from Canada and he looked… smaller, I didn’t exactly spend a lot of time contemplating this change!”

“ _‘He got smaller_ ’ -- Jesus, Vecchio, and you call yourself a detective, what the hell were you --”

"Maybe Benny gave him a trim ‘cause it was hotter down here, how the hell should I know?"

“Don’t you know a damn thing about dogs?”

" _Zitto!_ Look, guy you know is a nut comes in with a dog that looks a little different but he says is the same, your first thought isn't generally 'freaky animal replacement', okay?"

Ray felt himself deflate.

"Yeah, well, it is. That's exactly what it is. Came home one day, back late from patrol, boom. Whole new 'Dief'."

Another pause.

"Well, shit."

Ray huffed what might have been a laugh.

"Yeah."

"Look, you need anything? I mean, it's kinda a rough season for it, but I could come up, or, uh, I could call when he's back, or... Shit, I dunno, anything?"

Ray ran his hands through his hair. Vecchio being nice wasn't exactly something he'd prepared for, but then, none of this was.

"Uh. No. No, it's... fine. It's... well, it's fucking weird, but it's weirdly fine, y'know? It's... it's _Fraser_  up, down, and backward."

Vecchio laughed. "Yeah. Yeah, that's Benny all over, isn't it? Listen man, you change your mind, if he needs anything, if you need anything--"

"Yeah, yeah, I got the Vecchio Helpline, I'll let you know, okay?"

"Okay."

Ray stared at the carpet, dog hair piled over dog hair, all the little bits they never could get out. He wondered how much of it was Dief's, and how much was... Dief's.

"Okay," Vecchio repeated. "Well, uh. Can't say I'm glad you called, but--"

"Yeah. Give my love to Stella."

"Not on your life."

Ray laughed, hung up the phone. Let himself slide to the floor, fur and wool scratchy on his face, and cried.

*****

It was hard to see on his way out to the dog shed to feed the team, later. But they were happy to lick off the snot and the tears and the tiny bits of Diefs past and present he’d picked up from the rug -- and for once, he let them.

*****

And that was it, basically. He made a few more calls, followed up a few leads, but although the picture got clarified, there was no big resolution. Just this:

* Benton Fraser has a dog. (Or wolf. Or wolf-dog.)  
* Benton Fraser’s dog is Diefenbaker. He’s deaf (sometimes), and freakishly smart, and maybe-probably-doesn’t-but-maybe talks back.  
* That’s Fraser. That’s who Fraser _is_. He’s the guy with the wolf (dog).

So when one dog (wolf, wolf-dog) dies, or gets injured, Fraser disappears for a few days, and comes back (or goes to a new posting -- Ray never did quite figure out whether he did that on purpose, but it seemed to happen a lot -- then again, the guy moved posting a lot _anyway_ , at least until Chicago) with a new dog (wolf). Sometimes with a single bullet missing from his gun.

(Ray couldn’t bring himself to count Fraser’s ammo this time. He wasn’t sure which would be worse, knowing Fraser did it himself, or knowing Dief’d gotten hurt bad enough he didn’t have the chance.)

And he never says a damn thing about it. To anyone. Ever, as far as Ray can tell.

In the psychological weirdness tally that is Benton Fraser, it had a lot of competition, but Ray was pretty sure this topped the weirdness pile.

(He also wondered if that’s why Fraser was so weird about the Vecchio thing at first. Or maybe he should’ve handled it better, ‘cause he had the practice. And at that thought, Ray gave up and got himself a shot for his coffee, because nope, he wasn’t paid enough for that level of philosophizing.)

And life went on. This Dief was narrower, more excitable. He preferred cheese danish to powdered donuts, but it’s not like he’d turn his nose up at either. Ray was sure the townsfolk, someone, would say _something_ , but if they did, it never made it back to his ears. Eventually, he stopped wondering. Eventually, it settled into the background weirdness of his life with Fraser -- and like everything else, was worth putting up with, to get to share that life.

*****

Twelve years later, Dief died. Again.

*****

Ray held Elizabeth in his arms, her eight year old body crying, full on, in the way only children could. In the way Ray wished he still could. But he didn’t, he held it together, held their daughter in his arms as she shook and sobbed and keened, and he murmured stupid, pointless lies, reassurances in English and Polish and Hebrew and the few words of Inuktitut he knew, and when language failed them both, he brushed her hair back from her soaking, messy face, and he kissed tears and snot, and the salt and wet got in his mouth, and he didn’t care. He didn't care, because his baby was hurting, and all he could do was take it in for her, be with her through it. His own tears fell in her dark hair, soaked up as he pressed his face to the top of her head, and together, alone in a cabin that for once felt too large, too empty, they grieved.

*****

When Fraser showed back up, three days after he walked out with an old and injured Dief and the bang of a gunshot tore his child apart, Ray pulled Elizabeth inside. He sat her down on her bed, crouched low in front of her. The eager sound of a young dog running around exploring the place floated in through her window.

“Look, uh.” He tried a smile. She stared at him, waiting, freakishly patient. Definitely got that from her other father.

“Okay, so your dad’s, um. He’s got… a new, uh. Dog. Except it’s gonna be a little weird, ‘cause--”

“I already know Dad brought Dief home.”

Ray blinked.

“Honey, you… you know Dief, the Dief that we knew, he’s dead, right?”

Teenagers didn’t have anything on the look of disdain Ray’s eight year old could make. Probably got that from Fraser, too.

“Of course, Daddy. And now Ben’s brought him home again.”

What the hell -- what the hell was he supposed to say to that?

She saw his look and took pity on him.

“He’s going to be different now, but it’s still Dief. We just have to help him remember, that’s all. Don’t you want him to remember who he is?”

Ray stared at their daughter -- their daughter, not related to either of them more than any other human ever was, but theirs anyway, no doubt, no damn question -- and he swallowed, and said, “Yeah. Yeah, that's right.”

And he took his daughter's hand, and they went outside to welcome Fraser and Diefenbaker home.


End file.
